DIMM032: Push To Talk
Push to talk is a control scheme for voice communication online.
I was starting to make this super complicated but that's really it. Normally your microphone would just always be on (Open Mic), but with PTT, you hold down a button and your mic switches on and you can talk. When you let go of the button, the mic turns off.
Ever since I was super young talking on my Xbox One while playing Overwatch 1, I have used push to talk to communicate my thoughts to my friends in the Xbox Party Chat. It seemed like the obvious course of action: use PTT to get rid of any background noise and family members bursting in to your room.
The weird thing to me was seeing that um nobody else used this. Everyone else was just on open microphone, and would occasionally mute.
I continued to use it after I left my trusty Xbox for the master race, I got certain mice specifically because they had a side button that I would just use for discord push to talk. I got wireless mice specifically because I wanted to be able to hold the mouse in my hand and still talk while away from my computer.
Only exactly what I wanted to come out of my mouth was what came out.
But was that a good thing?
It was more like, only what I thought was useful to others came out.
My singing? Not useful.
My vocal stims? Nope.
My laughter that didn't reach a certain threshold of being "real"? Nah.
A lot of the time I would laugh slightly later than I would normally because I had to wait a bit for my finger to push down the push to talk button so that people could hear it.
It was basically a performance for others, to be the me that I wish that I could be. One that wasn't annoying and irrational and didn't breathe or eat or laugh or sing or gamer rage or have a fucking mental illness that causes me to say the same phrase over and over again for hours. What I (thought I) wanted to be was a normal person. Nobody else did those things on open mic, those things weren't useful to the group, so I didn't push the button for people to hear them.
This kinda goes toward my whole idea that like, if my microphone quality is not good, I am a bad person. There must be zero issues with my microphone, and if it is bad then I am bad. Of course I know that that is not true, I speak with people whose mic sounds like they built it in a cave with a box of scraps. And I don't think of them any less than anyone else! But I can't help but feel that way and get super embarrassed when my microphone doesn't work exactly like I want it to.
Which is why for years I just stayed on push to talk.
This was... a lot of my experiences from before I started transitioning. It makes sense to me now, because it was basically all I knew. I put on a mask and cosplayed as a man every day, I would carve out all of my experiences to try and make that something that others approved of.
I did sooooo many things to try and look cool, to try and be the same as all the other boys in my small town. That was... not the best decision...
The problem, of course, was the mask itself, or more the fact that I thought I had to wear it; that's what everyone told me I had to do! I thought many times in school that every man, if they had the choice, would be reborn as a girl. Obviously girls were that much better, everyone would do it in a heartbeat.
(That's not true by the way)
The breaking of my trance (pun massively intended) started in 2019, when I went to a summer camp near me. My school was giving out passes there for free to students that were picked by the staff. I was the only person at my school that went there, and that was probably the best decision of my life. I had fun with a bunch of other people who didn't know me, I could reinvent myself. And I did! I had fun there unabashedly, I danced and sang and ran around and made jokes and it was amazing!
The next year was the panini. Locked indoors with only myself gave me a lot of time to think about myself. Which wasn't what I usually did, I usually thought about what others wanted of me, what others expected me to act like. I realized that um I wasn't exactly a recluse, I wanted to meet people in real life? Everyone just kinda told me that I was, and I believed them!
I realized that there were a lot of things that I wanted to be, including... a girl? At the time I questioned it so insanely much, so meticulously. But god it was sooooo obvious, I wish I could have just grabbed him by the shoulders, looked him in the eyes, in his soul, and made him understand that he was trans.
I eventually did figure it all out, after asking a lot of trans women about it and reading tons of posts about it online (a very cis thing to do). But it is just baffling to me how long I mulled it over.
I went to college and hung out the whole year in a group of like 15 other trans people, in person. Believe it or not, there was no push to talk in our conversations. And would you look at that, they all did the same things that I did! They were annoying and irrational and they would breathe and eat and laugh and sing and gamer rage and say the same phrase over and over again for hours! They had problems with each other, they had, dare I say, emotions?!?!?!
And we all loved each other for it! It was so much fun to be with all of them, because we all could be our true selves, in a way that I hadn't realized was possible. It's almost like these are my people! (fun fact, a lot of my best friends from primary/secondary school were either lesbians or trans people, just after I knew them. hmm weird how that works)
Being with these people made me feel like I wasn't so alone, once again, I didn't even think I was alone!
I've since left college, and I've met a bunch of trans people who play Deadlock basically every day. They are my bestest of friends, and they also are freaks like me!
I was initially still using PTT when I joined, but over time it felt less and less necessary, and one day I just couldn't use it because we decided to play beat saber. I had two controllers in my hand so I couldn't use PTT!
And after that day, I just never turned it back on. And believe it or not, the world hasn't exploded! I do all of the fun things that make me me, and my friends love me for it! And more importantly, I love me for it. I'm good at singing, and I'm funny, and I have a good laugh, and I may vocal stim occasionally but that's all good!
I recently said this to them, saying, imagine if I was still in PTT, and they actually said that that would be horrible.
They know the real me, and they love the real me, and that is all I could've ever asked for.
Believe it or not, transitioning makes people love themselves more :3